


Real or Not

by Rasiaa



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Light BDSM, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 09:42:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15337134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rasiaa/pseuds/Rasiaa
Summary: The people Steve is talking about are dead.They should be, by all rights, but they're not.Bucky wonders if Steve feels like this. Like nothing is real and that he doesn't fit at all. He probably did at first, but it's been years since he was taken from the ice in the Arctic and he wasn't ever in the hospital. It's probably worn off by now.





	Real or Not

**Author's Note:**

> My therapeutic writing that turned into porn. I don't even know why I'm surprised at all.
> 
> Anyway. I just was discharged from the mental hospital and this is exactly what I'm feeling. My therapist suggested I write when I'm too stressed and voila, this is the result. Bucky seemed like a good choice since he's just as fucked up as I am.  
> Who knew that checking into a hospital could make you feel like you're so removed from everything?

He honestly thought it would be different.

He thought it would be easy. Fluid. Relief.

It's not any of that. Frustrating would be a good word. Disoriented, another. Heartbreak sums it up nicely.

He can look at the familiar figures of his bedroom, at his things nestled in with Steve's around the apartment, the chip in the paint on the wall. He can absorb the feel of hot water in the shower, his own utensils, his own clothes. It doesn't feel real, though.

It feels distant, detached. The soft fabric of his blanket and the cold tile of the kitchen floor and even his own skin feel different than they felt before.

When he was the Asset that didn't matter. He recognizes the feeling as the same as what he felt when he was defrosted after a few years. But as the Asset he'd be out and back in within two to three days. This is the longest he's been out of some kind of hospital or ordered control system since before the war.

He pauses and lifts his pen from the paper of his notebook (which the nice nurse had recommended he write in as she'd handed it to him with a smile. She was the only one who wasn't afraid of him, of the reputation that precedes him. So he took her advice). He sets the pen down and starts to count under his breath. "'45…'55…'65…'75…'85…'95…'05…'15…sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty."

It's been eighty years. He's one hundred two years old. He has to think about that for a solid minute.

Eighty years of being in someone else's control, eighty years without free will… well. That makes his real life, the here and now, a bit more difficult to adjust to.

Steve stirs behind him. "Wha' you doin'?" he murmurs, voice still think with sleep. "Time s'it?"

There's simplicity and safety in the knowledge that Steve still has that Brooklyn accent when he is half asleep and his guards are down. It makes him seem more human than he actually is.

He looks at the clock. "Four fifty six," he says, putting the pen in the crease of his notebook and setting it on the bedside table.

"The hell? Why're you awake, Buck?"

He shrugs. "Didn't sleep."

"At all?"

"No."

Steve huffs unhappily and sits up, leaning against the headboard. "Com'ere," he mutters, opening his arms and tugging a bit on Bucky's night shirt.

He goes willingly, resting his head on Steve's shoulder. "Want to tell me?" he asks.

"I'm fine," Bucky protests.

That gets him a snort of disbelief. "You're so full of shit, Barnes," Steve says, but there's no venom to the words. Steve presses his face into Bucky's hair and takes a deep breath. "You don't have to talk if you don't wanna. Just tell me what you need."

It should be simple. But it's as simple as feeling like the sheets around them are real. So he says nothing.

A minute goes by, or maybe two, or maybe eight hundred, he doesn't know. But the sun is starting to leak through the crease between the two curtains, so time is moving as it is wont to do. He has to admit to disappointment. Capturing a moment is so hard.

Eventually Steve pulls away. He gets out of bed, shivering automatically at the chill. Bucky watches him walk over to the window and yank apart the curtains.

Brooklyn doesn't have the skyline Bucky vaguely remembers. This is the same apartment they rented before the war and it possesses none of the same qualities that it used to. There's more history than theirs here, millions of footsteps other than theirs that have made their marks.

Steve pushes the window up and slides onto the balcony just outside it, landing lightly. He glances over his shoulder.

Bucky follows suit after pulling a sweatshirt on, and they lean on the rail that used to be rusted at the edges.

"We'll fall to our deaths here, Stevie," he used to say, but it was a futile, weak argument. They knew better, that the balcony wouldn't give way just because one rail would.

Steve used to laugh at him.

The sky is turning pink, the edges of it a hollow purple, and it's all broken by the buildings and skyscrapers that weren't there before and the ones that were. The birds are waking and so are their neighbors.

A lot of them look at Steve in awe and look at Bucky in fear, and both of them in disbelief.

"It used to be that we knew everyone ten miles out," Bucky says before he even knows that he's speaking.

Steve glances over and doesn't respond, refocusing on the sky.

"I should be on the way to the docks, Stevie. To strain to do the work that wouldn't bother me at all now. You oughta be in bed, or something, drawing or bein' sick."

Steve sighs. He doesn't look over. "Shoulda, coulda, woulda, Buck. It's over now."

"Still. Doesn't feel like it."

"I know," Steve agrees, nodding. "Ms. Green six doors over should be setting up the shop three blocks down. Mr. Sanders should be getting the bakery ready, his wife and daughters baking while he and his sons take care of the main room. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas prepping the school that opens in three hours."

Bucky never remembered the names of these people, but he knows who Steve is referring to. He leans further on the rail, not feeling the metal through his sweatshirt. He curls his metal hand into the sleeve.

The people Steve is talking about are dead.

They should be, by all rights, but they're not.

Bucky wonders if Steve feels like this. Like nothing is real and that he doesn't fit at all. He probably did at first, but it's been years since he was taken from the ice in the Arctic and he wasn't ever in the hospital. It's probably worn off by now.

Steve loops an arm around Bucky's waist and tugs him closer. "They would've been ashamed of us, horrified, sickened," he says, breath hot on Bucky's ear. "That's the only thing I don't miss, honestly."

Bucky doesn't get to respond. Steve turns Bucky's head with his index finger and leans down for a kiss.

His eyes close, and he loses himself to it, doesn't care about the stares he can feel on them, about how this will end up online like this is everyone's business. He tilts his head for a better angle, feeling Steve's eyelashes on his cheek and Steve's teeth digging into his bottom lip. Steve bites hard, knows that Bucky can take it, that he wants it, and so doesn't flip out at the taste of blood like he used to.

"We'll scar the neighbors," Bucky breathes. Steve laughs, pulling back an inch.

"What do you care?"

"I don't," Bucky admits, "but I don't want our sex life on the news later."

Steve laughs again, pulling away entirely. He pulls Bucky's hand and they head back into the bedroom.

Bucky closes the window. Steve turns him around and pulls him close, holding him. Bucky reaches around and half-heartedly tugs at the curtains to close them. It works, luckily. Steve breathes out an order to the AI that Tony had installed some time ago to turn on the floor lights, bathing the room in a soft glow. Bucky snorts.

"Going for seduction, Rogers?" he asks.

"With you? Always."

He doesn't give Bucky the chance to answer, spinning them around so he can back Bucky onto the bed.

He scoots up so he can rest his head on the pillows, tugging one down so he can hand it to Steve while he pulling out his hair tie.

"Fucking gorgeous," Steve murmurs, lifting his shirt over his head to drop it to the floor. "You're fucking gorgeous, Bucky," he repeats.

Bucky ignores him, sitting up to strip as well. The sweatshirt and his loose tank underneath go first and the sweat pants and boxers go next. He slides the pillow under himself and puts his arms above his head. Steve's gaze visibly darkens, making Bucky swallow harshly. "Handcuffs, then?" Steve checks, already reaching for the drawer in the bedside table. Bucky just nods. Steve drops lube on the bed and fiddles with the cuffs.

"Remember your safe word," Steve says, then leans across Bucky quite deliberately to hook him to the headboard. Bucky groans, tilting his head back as their cocks brush together.

"Fuck," he hisses, tugging automatically at the restrains once they're secured.

"Be quiet," Steve reprimands, pinching his side harshly. Bucky hisses again at the sharp flare of pain, but he makes no more noise.

Bucky barely notices when Steve starts to prep him, just tilting his head up to the ceiling and letting the pleasure wash over him. He tugs constantly at the handcuffs, restless. Steve breaks him from his distraction with kisses over his chest and a sharp bite to his left nipple. He lets out a sharp yelp of surprise. Steve just laughs lowly, adding another finger and more lube. He continues with the kisses, feather light, all the way down.

"Get going," Bucky says, partly to get to the actual fucking and partly to piss Steve off.

Both goals are met.

Steve hits him, the kiss he was pressing to his thigh turning into a bite that will probably bruise, and Bucky's left with a sharp sting of emptiness as Steve pulls his fingers away.

"I said be quiet," Steve scolds, but he does actually start to ease into Bucky, so that gets mostly ignored.

Bucky rolls his eyes back up to the ceiling, biting his lip and starting to breathe a bit heavier.

Steve settles and waits for Bucky to get used to it, leaning forward to take Bucky's lip into his mouth instead, pressing in further as a result. Bucky shudders, straining more at his cuffs and battling with the desire to stay put or to just touch. A kiss barely feels like enough.

"Green," Bucky breathes against Steve's mouth, and then wishes slightly that he hadn't because that means that Steve leans back. But that also means movement, so he feels it's an acceptable compromise.

Steve taps at Bucky's knee so Bucky spreads his legs further, and that's when Steve really gets going, his movements harsh and unyielding. Bucky closes his eyes and tries to move with him. Steve presses his hips to the pillow, though, so Bucky stills, allowing Steve to take control of this.

"I love you, you know?" Steve says, the words making Bucky groan in response. "You're fucking beautiful like this -" Steve reaches up and starts to comb his fingers through Bucky's hair, the movements harsh as the rest. "Laid out for me. For me."

Bucky nods desperately. "Isn't that right, sugar? Just for me," Steve continues. The hand in Bucky's hair moves to his throat, gentle fingers tracing before pressing lightly under his Adam's apple. Bucky chokes, and Steve laughs a little. "You still want a collar, doll?"

They'd talked about it, briefly, a few days ago. Bucky thought Steve had forgotten. Guess not, Bucky notes deliriously, nodding, the pleasure washing over him in waves. Steve grins, his fingers trailing down the center of his torso, over the head of his cock. Bucky jerks in his restraints, moaning. "Ask for it," Steve says.

"Fuck," Bucky says, his voice rough from the brief sensation of choking. "Please, Stevie, please. I've been good, please -"

Steve wraps his hand around him, and Bucky's gone.

It takes a minute for him to come back to himself, and when he does, Steve is panting above him, smiling. Bucky smiles back.

"You good?" Steve checks, pulling out. It's wet, and Bucky relishes in it, in the knowledge that this is real. Bucky nods again as Steve leans up to open the cuffs.

"I love you," Bucky mutters, pulling his arms down to his sides. Steve smiles, leaning in for another kiss. Bucky reaches for him, but Steve reaches for the bedside table again. 

"Should've seen the lady's face when I bought this," Steve says conversationally. Bucky frowns.

"Huh?"

Steve pulls out a collar.

Fur lined dark leather with three gold D rings, the sight of it makes Bucky's breath hitch.

"You said you don't feel real," Steve murmurs. He runs a hand over Bucky's head, his eyes soft. "You said you needed something to ground you."

"You - so you -"

"You want it permanently? Or just during sex?" Steve asks gently, handing it to him.

The leather is smooth and the fur is cold under his fingers, the rings glinting in the thin strip of sunlight leaking through the curtains. "Permanent," Bucky says.

Steve nods like he expected this and takes it back. Bucky lifts his hair and tilts his head so Steve can secure it.

The effect is instant. The shivers that Bucky hadn't really noticed cease and the world settles. He takes a deep breath and leans his forehead on Steve's chest, wrapping his arms around his waist. He has no words.

Steve hears them anyway.

"Shower and I'll make breakfast, okay?" Steve says, and makes to pull away.

"Shower with me," Bucky says.

Steve nods with a grin.

This. This is something that he can believe is real.

A memory, clear as day, flashes across his mind:

_"Wish we could be this way forever," he'd said._

_Steve had nodded sadly, his fingers trailing through the hair on the nape of his neck. He wrapped his hand around the back of his neck and squeezed gently. "Me too, doll. Me, too."_

_The sunlight began to leak through the curtains onto their thin mattress. Bucky curled his knees in closer to avoid it._

_"You'll be late," Steve said, and let go. Ice had overcome him, but he got up anyway._

"Forever has come, right?" Bucky says. Steve pauses in surprise, glancing over. Then he nods, smiling.

"Yeah, Buck. Forever starts now. 'till the end of the line."

Bucky turns to look at the window, and doesn't avoid the sunlight.

He can feel its warmth, and for once, it seeps into his skin, and he can feel the warmth of the sheets and the soft lining of the collar and the heat from the bite on his thigh. It comes into focus with startling clarity.

**Author's Note:**

> And yes, this takes place in 2020, you're not imagining that. Sebastian Stan is signed on for four more movies so whoever likes to say that Bucky is dead can bite me.  
> (I'm just crying over that because I still haven't even seen the movie and someone thought it would be a great idea to spoil it for me. I really hate having no money.)


End file.
